The fastest ever supercomputer in the UK would be one of the five quickest computers in the world if finished now, but the tremendously powerful machine will have a humble home in a Bristol car park.
with scant detail, but at the University of Bristol, UK, who is running the project to build it, says it will consist of about 5000 powerful graphics processing units, or GPUs, and run at more than 200 petaflops. This will make it the UK鈥檚 most powerful computer by far, with 10 times as much capacity as the 拢79 million ARCHER2, which was put into service last year聽and runs at around 20 petaflops. The world鈥檚 most powerful computer is currently Frontier, which runs at over an exaflop, or 1194 petaflops.
If finished today, McIntosh-Smith says Isambard-AI would probably sit within the top five fastest computers in the world, but by the time it is up and running, it is likely that others will have been brought into service and it will sit within the top 12.
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鈥淚t鈥檚 very exciting. We鈥檝e lagged in the UK for quite a while,鈥� says McIntosh-Smith. 鈥淚t feels like we鈥檙e finally coming out of the desert for computing in the UK and starting to really catch up, and we鈥檒l be able to compete again.鈥�
The machine will use about 5 megawatts of power, leading to a monthly electricity bill of 鈥渕illions鈥� of pounds, he says. It will be water-cooled and it is hoped that the waste heat can be reused. The hot water from Bristol鈥檚 existing Isambard 3 computer is already used to heat a university building next door, but there will be much more waste heat from Isambard-AI. McIntosh-Smith is currently in talks with the local authority about ways to use it.
The UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology declined to comment when approached by 快猫短视频, but further details of the types of chips used in Isambard-AI are likely to be announced at the UK government鈥檚 upcoming global AI summit on 1-2 November at Bletchley Park.
McIntosh-Smith says global hardware shortages of GPUs are making the build harder. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e not been able to get them for love nor money and they鈥檝e been a lot more expensive,鈥� he says. 鈥淔ortunately, the technology we really wanted, we could get. So we鈥檙e actually very, very happy.鈥�
Isambard-AI will be built in the car park of the National Composites Centre in Bristol, where a compound has been constructed to house modular, weatherproof containers. This avoids costs associated with building a dedicated home for it and allows flexible upgrades in the future.
Engineers at the National Composites Centre were already building , which was being constructed in modular containers like those used on cargo ships. Part of Isambard-AI will be installed in a container already planned for that machine, and another will be added to it.
Construction is due to start on the machine in March 2024, and it will become the UK鈥檚 fastest GPU system long before it is finished, with researchers able to run research on it as it is being built. It should be completed by the middle of next year.
McIntosh-Smith says the machine will be a boon to UK researchers and that there was a desire in government to create the capacity needed to build artificial intelligence models that are based on accurate, copyright-free data, rather than current commercial models that are based on pirated journalism and books 鈥� a state that he says is 鈥渢he Wild West of AI鈥�.
鈥淚 think the government wants that to be possible. Whether somebody decides to do it or not is a different matter, but, at the moment, it鈥檚 not even possible even if somebody thinks it is a good idea. We don鈥檛 have the computing power to do it. But that is what we will have from next summer,鈥� says McIntosh-Smith. The machine will be available for researchers working on AI and a host of other scientific and logistical problems, just as ARCHER2 already is.
